Your residence can be a visual expression of not just your lifestyle preferences, but even your faith. After all, your home reflects who you are, and your faith is perhaps the most important aspect of a person. This is especially true of Muslims who give a lot of importance to following religious rituals. This perhaps explains one of the reasons why Islamic calligraphy art for sale has no parallel with other spiritually-inspired art forms. A Muslim home usually has on display an artwork of Arabic calligraphy – the text is most likely to be verses of the Quran that are written or painted or printed on any surface, mostly cloth or paper. In Islamic calligraphy canvas, the surface or medium is canvas. The text is either directly painted on the canvas, or the handwritten calligraphy is first digitised and then printed on canvas.
Traditionally, a passage from the Glorious Quran would be stitched with a golden thread on a square or rectangular black fabric that would then be framed and hung on the wall. This use of golden and black colours comes from the golden calligraphy on the black fabric that covers the Kaaba at the Masjid Al-Haram in Makkah. Traditional Islamic calligraphy art also comprises of decorative wall carpets, mostly made in Central Asia and South Asia. Densely filled with intricate floral patterns, these wall carpets have at their centre a verse or chapter from the Quran stitched in calligraphy. They can be directly hung on to the wall, or framed.
Now, it’s the era of minimalist wall stickers and Islamic calligraphy canvas. These new experiments take lesser time than making classical Islamic wall art. Stickers are especially popular as they are often low-priced, easily available and need no framing. In the absence of a frame and with the bare wall forming the backdrop, the focus is only on the calligraphy.
Islamic calligraphy canvas, in contrast, relies on colours and backgrounds as a means to draw attention to the calligraphy, and thereby, the message. Unlike decals, canvas needs to be stretched over a wooden mount. The text can be painted on the canvas, or it can be first written on paper, and then digitised in order to be printed on canvas. This can help in mass production in any size.
The primary aspect, after calligraphy, is the use of colours. The significance of colours in home décor comes from the ability to add brightness to our spaces, and give further currency to our tastes. Nowadays, at least one wall in a room is not plain white.
The use of colours in Islamic calligraphy canvas is that it serves as a break from the traditional golden-black combination used in calligraphy art for sale, besides helping draw attention to the calligraphy. A range of colours is applied – red, yellow, purple, green, beige, et al. That said, colours are only a tool and the actual purpose is to get the onlooker to read the text on the frame and ponder over its meaning.